Tips For Buying Seeds By Mail Order.
 (Read 50+ times)
By Glory Lennon
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Oh, but I know what’s going through your mind as you eagerly flip through those seed catalogs. There’s that feverish glow in your eyes as you see page after glorious page full to overflowing with beautiful flowers, fascinating herbs, luscious fruits and vegetables, trees, shrubs, bulbs and all manner of items that would do spectacular things for your garden. You’re thinking, “I want it all!” But what you should be asking yourself is, “Can’t I get this stuff at the garden center down town?” Well, let’s see if this is true.
Those catalogs are coming to you at the best possible time, right after the Chanukah/Christmas rush and the New Year splendor has left you in that post-holiday slump. There’s no denying those catalogs are cheering. Of course, it’s only the best time for the people hoping you spend way beyond the necessary. You are a winter-weary consumer aching for the start of spring and the growing season and boy, do they know it! Those diabolical purveyors of seeds are hoping you are so sick of winter that you’ll delude yourself into thinking if you buy theses seeds miraculously spring will show up sooner. Trust me, it doesn’t work that way but we tend to forget that as we start dreaming of summer. They got you where they want you, snowed in, hibernating and within easy reach of a tempting catalog’s ordering sheet. But don’t even pick up the pencil yet! There is much to consider before you do that.
First thing’s first. You don’t fool anyone. You already have a stash of seeds from years gone by so get them out and sort through them. You might already have all you need to make a great garden, no doubt from the last time you went willy-nilly and bought too many seeds through the mail. Make two piles, the I’ll-keep-them-and-use-them-this-year pile and the other. While those others may be boring to you, they are still viable. Yes, germination goes down every year but not too long ago some seeds were found just lying around in a pyramid or a cave somewhere and they actually germinated. Surely any seeds you got hiding are nowhere near as old as those.
Don’t ever throw seeds away unless it is in a freshly tilled patch of soil. If you don’t want to use old seeds, perhaps you are bored with that cultivar, they didn’t produce as you would’ve liked or you just want to try a new variety, consider giving them to a novice gardener, a neighbor or friend or donating them to a community garden, a daycare center ( kids love to poke their fingers into a paper cup full of soil and plant their own flower, you know) or a church where they may know who could use them. No use wasting what others may appreciate especially with food and plant prices being as they are.
Now that you know what you already have, take a look through those seed catalogs that are filling up your snow-covered mailbox. With these in hand it’s time to decipher the catalogs themselves. Burgess, Farmer, Gurney’s and Jung Quality sell plants, trees and shrubs more so than vegetable and flower seeds so you can give them a chance but don’t be surprised if you find nothing special. Harris, Vermont Bean, Henry Field’s, Johnny’s Selected and Shumway’s have both vegetable and flower seeds with emphasis on the vegetable. Totally Tomatoes is deceiving because they do carry some other vegetables though it’s tomatoes they concentrate on. If there’s an elusive tomato seed you’re looking for, they will have it. Seymore Selected Seeds and Select Seeds (Two totally different places) deal in only flowers of the cottage garden variety while Park seeds has an impressive collection of flower seeds but still has a good selection of vegetables seeds. Depending on what you are looking for will determine which catalog will fulfill your specific needs.
In general, seed catalogs with an emphasis on vegetables will usually have them listed first with glorious pictures. Most catalogs have great descriptions in regard to plant size, sun and water requirements, how long it takes for germination, for flowering and for the harvesting and sometimes the taste in the case of vegetables. Read these carefully and make a note of what appeals to you, what is best for your area and how many seeds are in each packet. The very good catalogs will tell you precisely how many they give you. Some seeds are more valuable than others, of course, and are sold accordingly. They like to price the seed packets similarly so the number of seeds is where they get you. If they don’t give an actual count they often do the next best thing and sell by weight.
The truly good seed catalogs have heirloom varieties. These will be the none-hybridized kinds that will produce true seeds which means that the seeds within the fruit you harvest will grow plants identical to the parent. This is especially coveted in vegetables but applies to flowers as well. Heirloom seeds may be more pricey (at times they are actually cheaper) but most people say they are well worth any extra cost. This is especially true if it’s a type of tomato or watermelon your family loves and simply cannot live without. If it always produces true seeds you need never buy another pack of seeds again. You just have to save them from year to year. That sounds like value to me.
So now you make a wish list. Pretend that you are Donald Trump and you have all the money in the world. This should be easy to do. Just emulate the five-year-olds that were making their Christmas lists for Santa. When that’s done you have to revert back to your poor self also remembering the size of your garden. That’s when the list gets trimmed down.
Can your garden hold ten tomato plants, a dozen marigolds, three long rows of sunflowers and a field of corn? Lucky you. But if you have a much smaller allotment of land you’ll have to plan properly. Keep in mind each plant requires at least a square foot of garden space unless we’re talking pumpkins, cabbage or zucchini. One Zucchini or cabbage plant can take up three square feet all alone and a pumpkin vine can go on seemingly forever if you let it. But they will also produce enough to feed a large neighborhood. So if you think you want a few different kinds of pumpkins or zucchini be prepared to eat them well into the autumn or sell them at a roadside stand. It would give your kids something to do and earn them some money. I’m sure they’d like that.
The point is only grow as much as you can reasonably use in the case of vegetables. If you have plenty of people to give produce away to or you are a proficient canner then plant tons of plum tomatoes, rows and rows of corn, string beans, peas and anything else you like to can or freeze for later use. Make that yummy tomato sauce in huge batches, can and put up dozens of jars and you won’t have to resort to that dreadful store-bought ragu for at least a year. But if you can’t or don’t want to do that limit yourself to one new variety per year of Tomato, Cucumber, Pumpkin seeds or what have you and plant only as much as your yard will allow. As a general rule two tomato plants should yield enough for your average 4 member family.
As for flowers, I’m of the opinion you can never have enough. My flower beds overflow with them and I like it that way. I even tuck in a few annuals around the vegetables to draw in pollinators. More for me to share with friends, for cut flower arrangements and to entice birds, bees and butterflies to come and stay. It’s a good thing, as Martha Stewart always says. But having said that, try to limit yourself to three or four new flower varieties and never more than two of one kind of flower. There’s always next year for that Striped Petunia or creamy white Marigold.
With the price of tea being what it is, in this particular case the Texas kind of tea, black gold, crude oil to be quite crude, and depending where you live it may cost a pretty penny to go to town to shop for seeds but will it be as much as the shipping and handling charge of ordering seeds by mail? Better check that out before you hop into the car. Most mail order places increase the postage with every few dollars you spend and others have a set amount no matter how much you spend. Look into that.
If you have to add ten dollars to the cost of 3 packs of seeds it may be cost prohibitive. The way to make it worthwhile is to only order seeds for plants that are hard to find or too expensive at the garden center. Seeds are always cheaper than an already grown, potted and ready to bloom plant and unfortunately there are always plants you will fall in love with but whose price tag makes you cringe. Don’t get seeds for the common Zinnia “State Fair” or the regular Buttercrunch lettuce or the uninspired Black Zucchini by mail order catalog. You can pick up the same thing just about anywhere even the supermarket without having to pay extra for the shipping or for fuel. You have to go to the supermarket anyway, don’t you? That only makes sense.
Of course being a wise consumer you will know to double up on errands to make the most of the booming gas prices by combining your trip to the garden center with that unavoidable food shopping trip. A word to the wise though, make certain you don’t buy ice cream and other perishables before going to any place as enticing as a garden center. It serves a bit like the twilight zone for the sunshine deprived gardener and you may easily lose a few hours without being aware of it. Trust me on that. Those endless racks of seeds have been known to hypnotize winter-weary gardeners but you must not allow this to happen. This first trip is just a recognizance mission to collect data, scope out prices and most importantly to see what cultivars are available.
So, there you are with that huge collection of seeds in front of you and your wish list in hand. Now you can compare and if you are satisfied with the same old Rutgers Tomato and Blue Lake Bush Beans then there’s no need to order through the mail but if you are hankering for a wild new hybridized, super-sized, mega-sweet something or that weird looking Kohlirabi you’d like to try you probably won’t find that at the supermarket.
So, you’ve made your list, checked it twice, trice, four times but don’t fill in that order blank yet. You can’t be trusted. That’s when it helps to have an objective person to check your list for you and ask you, “Do you really need all this?” Try to answer truthfully. It’s for your own good. Hopefully they’ll do a better job at dwindling down your list than my husband Tommy. He merely looks at my list and says, “We’re gonna have a heck of a garden this year. Can’t wait until spring!” Occasionally he even adds a few selections of his own. See what I have to contend with? Happy planting.
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Author Bio Box: Glory Lennon
 For more amazing garden facts, a glimpse at an unfinished novel and amusing short stories come visit me at
http://www.helium.com/user/show/32782.
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